I need guidance from personal experiences.

Hello, I am new to this community. I am currently in a very loving relationship, I trust and love my partner with all my heart, and know that I have the same level of trust and love in return. Recently, I have been experiencing a lot of retroactive jealousy surrounding their past relationships. I have no clue what these people look like, are like as humans, or what their relationships consisted of, nor do I logically care. It started with every single time I think about intimacy with my partner, a vivid image of her with someone else, or a question of “has she done this before?” accompanied by an image would show up in my head, and cause a feeling of my throat closing up. Now, this has transitioned into every single time I think about my partner, see my partner, talk to my partner, have any sort of my partner in my life that my throat closes up, which is constant. There isn’t a moment throughout my day anymore where I don’t have this feeling of my throat closing up, or that I am choking. I understand that this is my nervous system misfiring because of these OCD thoughts, and my brain has created a strong association between this person I love so much, and danger. I have done a lot of research online about how to handle this, tried many different forms of self guided ERP, but every time I find something powerful that helps ease the feeling, that itself turns into a compulsion of reassurance and comfort seeking, and seems to only make the feeling worse after a few days. From my understanding, the goal is to learn to find comfort in uncertainty, and learn to live with this feeling to rewire my brain into an association of partner + anxiety = safety, which logically I know to be true but the feeling remains, OCD doesn’t seem to care about logic. I am so lost and defeated, but prepared to live with this feeling forever to be with my partner, though it is very mentally taxing to deal with this constantly every single day, and I can tell it is starting to weigh on my partner as well. I know I am not supposed to check if ERP is working while practicing it, but it’s hard to do so when my brain has hyper fixated on the feeling in my throat. It is there at all times, and hard to not notice when it is gone. I cannot afford therapy or medication, which seems to be the only ways to fix this, I need help. What has worked for others in self guided ERP? What is a method I can practice that won’t become a compulsion or a way of seeking comfort? I am so lost, and feel hopeless. Please help me.

j vv

Date posted: 11h

Hi a bird 👋 I am not an expert, but this sounds like a combination of ROCD and Somatic OCD — a fixation on a relationship combined with a fixation on a feeling in the body. Combination themes are hard to navigate without professional guidance, in my opinion. It took many months of consistent therapy before I got my combination ROCD and Harm OCD more manageable. If you can, call the number listed on NOCD’s website. They can help connect you with a therapist, and in your case, perhaps a therapist with a sliding scale so that you can afford the sessions. Some things stood out to me as I read through your post: - the goal of ERP is not to “rewire your brain to associate anxiety with safety” or to “learn to find comfort in uncertainty”. The goal is to *sit with the discomfort*. Exposure and Response prevention is about breaking a feedback loop. When exposed to your fear, your OCD/body wants you to *do something compulsively* to help ease the feeling. In your case, it sounds like there may be mental compulsions occurring when you *try to force your thoughts to rewire your brain through brute force*, when you *engage in obsessive thinking and research about this issue*. Over time, compulsions reward your OCD/your brain by supplying relief. The brain’s fear center reacted way too strong for the situation, and it now feels like it helped you escape something dangerous. The next time that situation occurs, it will make it feel even more dangerous to help you escape the perceived danger faster. By doing compulsions, you are training your brain’s overactive fear center to not only increase an overreactive response, but to amplify it over time. The trick is to *do less* and *sit with the discomfort*, essentially starving OCD out in the moment. It craves *certainty and urgent action*…so when you expose yourself to the fear, you prevent a response from yourself (both physical and mental). This is ERP. It breaks the feedback loop. ERP trains your brain over time to *lower the fear levels* for this given situation. When you *do nothing and still survive*, your brain says “ah. I see. That was an unnecessary amount of fear for that situation. I’ll tone it down next time.” Over time, it can be trained to react with normal levels of fear when presented with a scary intrusive thought. -“I have done a lot of research online about how to handle this, tried many different forms of self guided ERP, but every time I find something powerful that helps ease the feeling…” Again, the goal is never to ease the discomfort you are feeling. Over-analyzing or endlessly researching can also become a compulsion. It can be so tricky to learn *how* to disengage from OCD thoughts—which is why I would recommend a therapist. It took quite some time for me to learn how to use NERs (non-engagement responses) to break the OCD loops for myself. It is very easy to *accidentally engage with OCD and feed it so that it grows*. I hope this helped somewhat. After learning and developing tools to safely disengage with your OCD, I would recommend addressing your root fear that OCD is trying to “fix”. In your case, this may be something like “I love my wife so much, I am afraid to lose her” or “I deeply fear being alone”. When OCD has no fear to take root in, it shrinks. Hoping you can manage this, recover soon, and have a wonderful life. 🫂

I need guidance from personal experiences.

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